Friday, May 29, 2015

I am so excited. This came home with me today. I have the older model, 6500, that I purchased used from a friend several years ago which was an upgrade from my Janome 4800. As you see I am a fan of Janome machines. I have recommended this machine to several of my friends, who purchased them and have been very satisfied, soooooooo when the store owner made me a terrific offer on this one, I could not refuse. I think my favorite feature is the built in walking foot, but then I like the Start and Stop button too, and then there is the lighting feature that lights up the whole work surface. Those are the new features I have discovered so far.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

I put off mending him until "after retirement" when I would suddenly have all the time in the world to finish all my projects and then some time left over to read, play piano and nap 😊 So retirement and I have been sooooo busy, but they are days filled with things I love to do rather than that work!

First I stripped off all the tattered fabric. This proved quite a chore and took several days. It was this block plus another where I had used the same fabric for a background.

With that done, the puppy is now naked, rather than tattered.

I pinned a piece of replacement fabric over the block and began clipping away the fabric I did not need, leaving enough to turn under the edge to do needle turn applique. Simple enough, right???? Wrong! This process proved to be something I hope never to have to do again.

Once the applique was done, I had to requilt the block as the newly appliquéd sections were not quilted. So I placed a pin in each corner of the block, carefully turned the quilt over and marked with blue tape the section the had to be re-quilted.

Easy Peazy, right? As a child, and as an adult, I could never color in the lines. Well, this also applies to doing free motion quilting following lines of a previous quilter.

I did my best though, and you know what "they" say, "If it looks good from a galloping horse....." So here is a picture of the finished repair from about 15 paces.

Looks pretty good, don't you think.....and that is as close as you are going to get to the quilting😉

Here is my grandson, Levi, holding his quilt that he has waited so patiently to receive back. He is usually galloping around himself, so doubt he will see I did not quilt in the lines.

I must share a valuable lesson I learned for all of you who quilt with a Janome that has the thread guide thing for large cones of thread. I always thought it had to be fully in the upright position to work right, but my spool of machine quilting thread kept flying off the spindle.

So I tried lowering the thread guide, and lo and behold, no more problems. Now who knew? Probably all of you out there, but I even checked the manual to see if this was in the instructions ( not that I had read the manual when I got the machine) and did not see it there. Maybe I should tell Janome of my discovery or if it is common knowledge, tell them to include it in the manual, that is if anyone takes the time to read it☺️

Friday, May 8, 2015

Does anyone enjoy Seminole piecing? I have just played around with it a little bit, but love the designs you can make with the various piecing techniques. To the right is a project I will be teaching to my quilt club, Stitchin' Friends tomorrow. It's meant to be a pillow! But could also be a small wall hanging or table topper. Finished size is 17" x 20". I found the free pattern at http://www.fave crafts.com. I modified the directions a little to use 3 fat quarters.

So far I have made three of them and enjoyed the process all three times.

I did a little shopping at Mary Jo's Fabrics in Gastonia yesterday. What fun! I have a grandson due to arrive in July and need to get busy on his quilt.

This fabric will be the back of the quilt. I was happy with the colors and graphics.

The quilt top will be English Paper Pieced tumbling blocks. Now you see why I need to get going in the quilt :)

I found the fabrics shown below for the blocks. Aren't these giraffes cute? The giraffes will be used in each of the tumbling blocks as well as the outside border. The grey will be an inside border.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Today is the first day of my retirement after working full time for 43 years. It is still hard to grasp not having to get up and go to a job each morning, but I think I will adjust nicely. I had some vacation time to take, so have eased into retirement the last couple of weeks. Today, to celebrate, my husband and I purchased a new piano. I used to play a lot just for our enjoyment, at least Fred was nice enough to say he liked listening to me play. It will be delivered on Tuesday.

I have finished the Patchwork of the Crosses blocks, all 56 +1extra of them. It is hard going into quilt shops or fabric stores now and not picking out fabric for the next few blocks. Just have to connect them all together with the 1,072 one inch connecting squares. Pictures follow of my last 6 blocks.